Tempest (27 page)

“Bones,” Kiaran said. “A layer of bones across the base of the tank. It doesn't matter where they come from, man or dog or fish—what matters is that when the lambs look in at this mer, they aren't just looking at another exotic beast. They're looking at the evidence of its foul hunger, and it will make them afraid and excited. That fear will bring them back over and over again.”

“Y'want to lay down a layer of…bones?” Kith sounded disapproving. “They'll muck the water something terrible, they will.”

“Boil them before they go in, and they'll be fine,” Kiaran replied. “Think of the bones as a tribute to Farval,” he said to Wes. “A sign of the sacrifice that went to capturing the creature in the first place. Talk to my father about suitable recompense for the loss of your brother. I'm sure he's got something in mind.”

“I'll do that,” Wes said, but his voice had lost the hardness and threat it had carried before now. He seemed nearly placated, which astonished Colm, given that the man had been seconds away from starting a brawl just a few minutes earlier. He stuffed Kiaran's sash back in his hand and stomped off.

Kiaran retied the blindfold and turned to Nichol. “How're you settling in, Nyle?”

“He'll do fine as an assistant,” Kith put in, eager to have something positive to say. “No fear in this lad, it seems, not when it comes to this beast.”

“I'm fine,” Nichol said, staring straight at Kiaran's face as if the man could actually see him. “Better off here than where I was.”

“I do believe that,” Kiaran said. “Kith, if you're confident in your protégé, perhaps you wouldn't mind leaving him to mind your wagons while you help me find my father. We can discuss the exhibit as we go.”

“Aye, Kiaran.” Kith took the younger man by the elbow and led him away, and a moment later, Nichol sat down on the edge of the wagon next to the tank and leaned into it slightly. It was dusk, and while Colm could tell that there were people moving around across the fallow field the rovers had stopped in, they were indistinct.

“There must be something we don't know yet,” Nichol murmured, his lips touching the side of the tank. “Something we don't understand. He wouldn't have come to me only to leave us hopeless.” Nichol looked into the tank at Colm. “Do you see? There's a piece missing, but we'll learn it. We'll survive. You'll survive, I swear.”

There, at last, was the fervency that Colm had been missing, the spark of life in Nichol that had been overshadowed by guilt and grief. There was the fire, and Colm smiled, careful to keep his lips closed over his sharp teeth, and knocked once on the glass.

Yes.

Chapter Twenty

The next three days were a blur of bumps and rocks and near misses, and Colm wasn't the only one to feel the pain of it. Kith complained mightily to Nichol and whoever else would listen, going on and on about his aching guts and the hard seat and how this new route was doing him no good.

“Blasted seer, turning us away from the main roads,” Kith muttered to Nichol as he tossed a handful of sea roaches through the tank's grate. “Says there's flooding coming down from the Spires. It's washed out the roads leading down from the mountains and sent the early caravans scurrying to the coastal road. This is faster, according to he. Faster.” Kith winced and arched his back. “P'raps, but it's worse on my damn bones.”

“I suppose he knows what he's doing,” Nichol offered as he prepared some wood for a fire. “You've relied on him for a long time, haven't you?”

“Oh aye, aye. Born afflicted by magic, that one. Most parents would have thrown away a babe with such a clear disability, but Regar is a powerful sorcerer in his own right and he knew his son's potential. That boy was speaking spells before he could walk properly, I hear, but he hasn't got his father's gift for that. The prophesying, though… That's always right. Always. Kiaran doesn't always have kind words to say, but you learn soon enough to listen to 'im when he turns them on you.”

“Has he ever seen into your future?” Nichol asked. The fire was burning now, just a fragile little flame, but Nichol was tending it carefully and coaxing it higher. The log it was built from was split into quarters, with each piece stood up on end to face the others. The tinder was on the ground in the center of it all, and the heat was channeled up the splits as it burned from the inside out, funneling the warmth into the pot that Nichol had laid on top of it.

“Once,” Kith said, sitting down with a grace that belied his purported pain. “A few years back, I met a woman in a town just outside the Siskanns—that's them marshes, the great bogs. She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, long dark hair, breasts as big as melons, and could she ever cook… She cooked for me every day, and it was divine. Settled this stomach of mine like nothing but drink's ever managed to.” He patted his ever-present bulge, incongruous beside the skinniness of his legs and arms. “The Spectacular was stopped there for two weeks, and by the end of it I knew I wanted to marry 'er. I was going to ask, but Kiaran caught me that evening, and he took off his blindfold and he said to me, ‘Find out what she looks like at night before you choose to spend the rest of your life with her.'

“An' I thought about it for a moment, and I realized that it was maybe a bit strange that she'd never let me stay past sundown. So I went back to her home that evening, quiet like, and I watched her leave the house for the nearest waterway, and I followed. It was a dangerous place. I could see the nimh-fish from the shore, big'uns, snapping their jaws in the air. I was going to call out to her, but she…” Kith shook his head.

“She crouched down on all fours at the edge of the water, and the next thing I know, she's sliding into the water on a scaly belly. Part nimh, she was—not completely changed, I could still see her feet and hands, but her skin and face…” Kith shuddered. “Made me wonder what kind of meat she'd been feedin' me when I came courting.”

“Part nimh-fish,” Nichol mused. “It makes one wonder how that happened. I mean, aren't they… They're a kind of serpent, aren't they? Could they somehow couple with a human?”

“Sometimes it's a curse that does it,” Kith said. “Has to be a strong one to affect an unborn child like that, but I knew a sorcerer who claimed he'd been paid to do it once. The babe died before it could be born, though, took the mother with it. Dark business.” Kith shrugged and poured a skin of water and some dried vegetables into the pot.

“How is it you're all so unconcerned by magic?” Nichol asked quietly. “Its use is completely restricted in Caithmor if you're not a priest.”

“Restricted, true,” Kith said with a shrug. “That don't mean it never happens. Magic's in all of us, Nyle, more in some, less in some, but there. Why would the gods give us gifts if they didn't want us to use them?”

“But then we'd have terrible wars,” Nichol protested. “Thousands of people died before. Whole cities were destroyed.”

Kith shook his head tiredly. “We 'ave terrible wars now. You think it's any less horrible for someone to die by a sword rather than a spell? People are always going to die, boy. War is the way of man, more than peace, more even than love. We fight for what we can get, and we fight to hold it. My whole village was wiped out by our Emperor's father as he worked his way along the northern coastline. Rounded us up, set our houses on fire. Some of us were fast enough to get away, but not most.”

“I'm sorry,” Nichol murmured.

“I survived, though what I had to give up to do so…” Kith shuddered. “Found my way, though it weren't easy.” He leaned back against the edge of the wagon and tossed Nichol the spoon. “Keep stirring that. Don't let it stick to the pot.” Kith turned his face and looked up at Colm. Colm looked back, still and silent, and after a moment, Kith shuddered and looked away.

“Makes my flesh crawl,” he muttered. “The way it looks at us. Like it's thinkin' of how much it'd like to rip our throats out. Got a glimmer of intelligence in its eyes, it does. Probably a fearsome hunter in the open water.”

“Probably,” Nichol agreed. He stirred the pot, then asked, “Are there many of you here who can do magic, then?”

“A fair few. Not going to be a problem for you, is it?”

“Not at all,” Nichol replied. “I'm just curious, I suppose. There's a lot I don't know about magic. Do people use it in their acts?”

“Not usually. It takes energy, magic does. You hafta be fit to make any use of it at all. Regar's the strongest sorcerer in the Spectacular by far these days, but his gift is in working charms on objects, like he did with the mesh there.” Kith waved a hand at the tank. “He spells things to make 'em more useful. Swords that never dull, clothes that don't wear out, metal that can bind to glass. Kiaran's got his prophecy, some of the acrobats can do tricks that make 'em stronger, more balanced, that sort of thing. Plenty of people who work magic find it best to keep moving, otherwise the local priests hunt 'em down. Some of 'em find a place with us.

“There was one who traveled with us for a time, oh, almost ten years past now. He was a great favorite of Regar's, was his lover for a time, I think. Powerful, that man was. He could farsee.”

“Farsee? Is that some kind of prophecy?”

“No, it's literally what it sounds like, Nyle. He could use his power to see any place he'd ever been before, and he'd traveled all over the world, even to the Garnet Isles. He could tell you what was happening, who was doing what… Saw it all clear as day. A great gift, that man had.”

“What happened to him?” Nichol asked.

“Oh, here it gets a bit sad. He and Regar had a falling out over something, and Regar turned him out of the Spectacular. Not a day later, he was picked up by the priests and hauled off to the capital. None's seen him since. Kiaran was broken up about it back then, but he was a high-strung child. Anything could make that lad cry. He's toughened up quite a bit since then.” Kith kicked his legs out straight and sighed. “Life does that to you.”

“So it does,” Nichol agreed, and he glanced at Colm before going back to stirring his and Kith's dinner.

* * * * *

The Roving Spectacular made its next semi-permanent camp a week later in the city of Devanon, halfway between the sea and the mountains. It wasn't a usual stop for them, and the small city was more than happy to permit the entertainers to set up and put on a show for a few weeks. Colm had half a day of watching the tent city go up around him, poles extended and erected with breathtaking speed, covered with colorful banners and holding up familiar sights. The red-and-blue enormity that was the Pinnacle took shape in the middle of their camp, and everywhere there were signs with the lidless blue eye, always watching. It had more meaning for Colm now that he knew there really was someone who could see him, and the arc of his future, and act on it.

The tents for the House of Horrors were built around Colm's tank. The cart was covered to look like a platform, and the dirty brown-and-gray cloth that Kith claimed was deliberately so, to make the exhibits more disturbing, was strung up overhead, dimming the bright light of the sun and making it almost impossible for Colm to look out. His vision wasn't very good, especially in the dark. The ability to sense every movement around him had made up for that lack while he was at sea, but now Colm just felt blind and hemmed in.

Being showered with bones didn't help matters. Regar didn't care what Kith did to make Colm look more fierce, apparently, but he wasn't about to undo the magic he'd used on the grate to make it easier for Kith to stick the bones in, so Kith had broken them up with an axe and dropped them in bits and shards into the tank. Colm curled against the far surface and felt the bones fall to the floor, all the little eddies and perturbations that the pieces made as they fell serving to distract him, at least. Some of the bones were clean, but others were still…somewhat gooey, flavored with the meat of whatever animal they'd come from. It made Colm's stomach curl in on itself with hunger. He'd had nothing but increasingly listless sea roaches to eat ever since they'd left Caithmor, and he was terribly hungry.

“Ah, well,” Kith said after he finally stopped pushing bones into the tank, enough that there was a sharp, thin layer across the floor. “It's better than nothing. I've got half a skeleton around here somewhere, I'll prop that against the outside and give 'em somethin' else to look at. Nyle!” he called to Nichol, who was doing his best to stitch up some of the larger rents in the cloth above their heads.

“Aye?”

“There's half a man in one of these trunks. Pick 'im out when you're settin' up the tables for the curiosities. I want 'im set up next to this beast.”

“I will,” Nichol said. He glanced over Kith's shoulder, and his eyes widened for a moment before he recovered himself. “Kith, why don't you go and get some fresh air? This stuff's still damp from Caithmor, and it's full of mold now. That's no good for your lungs. I'll finish things in here.”

Kith looked somewhere between eager and doubtful, one hand already reaching for where he kept his flask. “You sure you can do it?”

“I've visited your House of Horrors before,” Nichol said soothingly. “I remember how it goes. Go on, get some air. This is what you're bringing me along for, isn't it? Let me do some of the hard labor for a bit.”

“Don't have to tell me twice,” Kith said. “I'll be back later.” He left the gloom of the tent, and a few moments later, Kiaran appeared.

“You two seem to be settling in nicely,” he said with a smirk, then fell back as Nichol grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him hard against the tank.

“
Settling in?
” Nichol hissed. “Settling in to putting Colm on display in front of a bunch of gawking buffoons, and you call it a good thing?”

“Be careful how you refer to our livelihood,” Kiaran cautioned, holding on to Nichol's closed fists but not pushing them away. “You were both among those gawking buffoons not so long ago. You didn't think twice about the creature in the tank then, did you?”

“Colm is not just some creature,” Nichol said, but the anger was already being replaced by weariness. Nichol didn't have it in him to maintain a state of rage, and he sheepishly let go of Kiaran a moment later. “I apologize for that. I'm not myself right now.”

“I understand. Neither of you are.” Kiaran turned and looked into the tank, vaguely toward Colm's face. “Are you all right?”

Colm nodded, and then, for good measure, knocked once.

“A single knock means yes, or sometimes thank you,” Nichol offered. “Two knocks is a no.”

“That's clever.”

“The man who tends bar at my grandmother's inn is mute. It's his system, and it's simple enough.”

“Perhaps we can learn to communicate more with it. It must be difficult not to be able to say everything you want to say,” he said to Colm. “You still understand me perfectly, though?”

Colm knocked once.

“Brilliant. We'll work something out. Now that you've freed Kith from spending his days minding the House of Horrors, I daresay he'll spend most of his time in Devanon's drinking establishments and whorehouses. I've set my wagon up not far from here, so we should be able to speak often.”

“To what purpose?” Nichol demanded. “Unless you've found a way to free Colm from this shape, that is. We're too far from the coast to dare getting him out now.”

“He couldn't get out anyway yet,” Kiaran said. “Not while my father's spell still holds. The metal is too tightly bound to the glass, and the grate won't come off unless that bond is loosened.”

“How are we to accomplish that?” Nichol asked.

“With the bones. My father's magic works well on things that are man-made, things that have already been shaped by other hands, but it works very poorly on raw materials. He can make a sword sharp enough to cut the very air, but he can't draw the iron out of rocks. He can preserve a pair of shoes to last forever, but he can't tan leather. He can join a glass tank and a metal grate”—Kiaran gestured toward the top of Colm's cage—“but they are two objects that have no natural affinity for each other. The magic of that bond can be weakened, with a bit of effort. Look at the joints on the inside, Colm,” he said. “Feel for the gaps.”

Colm floated up to the top of the tank and ran his fingers along the edges of the metal. It felt solid enough, but not quite perfect. On a hunch, he rapped his knuckles sharply against the metal, then felt the tremor spread around the tank. There were, indeed, small imperfections here and there in the bond between the glass and the metal, so small they were nearly invisible.